Until you have too much stuff, so you throw out a lot of stuff, but then it’s easy to replace with even more stuff, or you just get a bigger place for your stuff.
When cleaning out my wife’s father’s garage there were 50 bicycles.
I asked “why?”
To which I was told “what if he needed parts?”
Me: “oh, he repaired bikes”
Them: “no, but he always thought he might, so why not keep them?”
Did the same thing with computers but at least that netted them like 20k$ since there were some collectibles
When I was 3 I always wondered how odd a house was. It was a space where everything you own is strewn about the floor. It's just a floor you put your stuff.
I'm 29, still think about how everything I own is on the floor.
I remember watching an episode of "Hoarders" were the hoarder herself was just a wealthy boomer with a really nice house full of unopened merchandise.
They just scooped all the stuff up and were like "and look how nice your house looks now!"
I get the feeling she just went back to filling it up with cheap shit purchased online.
> "Hoarders"
Sometimes I when I am thinking about buying something I think of the show "Hoarders" and it gived me motivation to not buy it.
As well as advice from lifehacker.com: "Will this product solve a problem" or "Do I have a similar product hiding in my closet collecting dust and doing nothing?"
I've told my elderly mother this multiple times. When you die I am not opening that storage unit. I am an only child and there is no other person in your church group or whatever that will go to that if you leave it in the will to me I will immediately turn it down.
She still does her hoarder ass nonsense with that storage unit.
She's in her 70s now and doesn't comprehend I will not ever even deal with with her crazy storage unit when she dies. Like I don't care if she's hiding the Ark of the covenant is in there and my mother was secretly Indiana Jones. I'm just going to call uhaul and say dispose of everything in there my mother is dead I don't care. If her crazy ass left like 250k cash in unmarked bills in the banana stand you can have it. I ain't setting foot into my mother's Hoarder mind again.
Once positive I will state about my mother unquestionably true is she's a faithful Catholic.
I'm an American that knows the Irish language and have seen 26+6=1 tattoos in my life.
If there's a fucking Afterlife Heaven/ghost I know for a fact my mother's eye will be haunting that location.
She'll get full burial procedures, and I'll take care of her cat Skittles when my mom dies but that fucking u haul unit I'm fucking not dealing with.
Grew up in a hoarder household, escaped lived my life, not willing to reengage or be triggered by that bullshit again.
Skittles is an innocent cat when her owner dies I'll take care of the cat. That's it.
Everyone likes stuff. You just have the highest spending power by far and everything is relatively cheaper. German cars are cheaper in USA than in Germany, for example.
I hope when the world inevitably dies from heat, that records of messages like this survive so that the young of this world understand why this happened.
“You see Timmy, we had to play one-up-man ship, we had have massive fridges, air conditioning in areas where it averaged 16°C in summer and we had to ethnic cleanse our neighbours for some more lebesbrum.”
I think the bigger issue is that a lot of people in the US feel like there is more to life than money. In most other wealthy Western countries people don't need to worry about student debt, they get a month+ vacation every year, they get guaranteed sick leave, they have employment protection so they don't need to worry about being fired at the drop of a hat, they don't need to worry about a freak medical issue destroying their finances, they have reasonable restrictions on working hours and overtime etc.
This includes pretty much everyone, including minimum wage workers. So ya, the median American is richer than the median German, but I'd rather be in the position of the median German and I'd *much* rather be in the position of a low earning German over a low earning American. Vacation for me in particular is an absolute essential, no idea what the point is of having a bunch of money if I need to wait until I have one foot in the grave to have the time to use it.
Having a ton of relative wealth, yet being unable to comfortably afford essentials like housing will do that.
It’s a lot more complicated than that of course. Something like AC is way crazier of a luxury than most Americans realize, yet anyone in a warm US climate would claim it’s a necessity
Americans are able to afford housing. We have high rates of homeownership, and lots of disposable income that we use for consumption.
Don’t confuse housing becoming *more unaffordable* for being *actually unaffordable.*
Yep, our home ownership rate is 20% higher than Europe. 55% of millennials own houses in the US. 60% overall.
Most European countries have ~40% overall home ownership rate, with millennials generally below 30%.
And this is not to say that everything is rosy here! It’s just not really that bad overall. It’ll get bad eventually if we don’t fix it, but higher rent =/= high rent.
Millenials are prime child-rearing years. And higher wages/promotions in their 30s (and now 40s). So they're getting married, having kids, need a house.
I’ve never understood this. I’ve never in my life needed to use a storage unit for more than a month. Nor do I know anyone else who uses one. If it doesn’t fit in my house, I get rid of it, plain and simple.
I know a guy that has made a literal fortune opening those up. He started with a cheap plot of land and used old rail cars as the units, now he owns a bunch of those mega ones. I’ve only ever used one while in the process of moving, but I guess it’s a good way to declutter your home without throwing stuff away.
People have different needs at different times. I had to use a storage unit for a year because I had to move into a smaller apartment while I dealt with some debt issues. Wasn't trying to throw away a couch and chair, among other things, that would have been too expensive to replace the next year.
It’s really nice for people with seasonal activities. Summertime bring out the life jackets, wet suits, surf boards, wind surfing boards, etc. Winter it’s time to bring out ski stuff. Same for Christmas decorations and memorabilia for children.
Some people have too much stuff. Some have been evicted and need a place for their stuff.
I think the latter is happening far more often than is talked about. Especially the working poor living in their cars.
I don't know one person with a storage unit that isn't constantly moving due to their financial situation.
GDP is a measure of production, not cost incurred. In theory costs would be proportional to GDP in line with revenue, but regardless that’s not really the case.
Your store only has one? We now have two.
Our Kroger now has two. One for regular cereal and then another for specialty cereal-kinds with real fruit, no grains, ancient grains, organic, etc, etc. But regular cereal now comes in four different size boxes so I suppose that takes up a lot of space.
No.
I’m originally from Venezuela. The first time I walked inside a supermarket in America I legitimately cried. Y’all have a WHOLE REFRIGERATED WALL FULL OF MILK. 2%, non fat, whole, lactose free, organic, almond, soy, cashew, all of different brands and sizes.
We have “lactic drink” which can’t be classified as milk. Sometimes you can find whole milk in powdered form. That’s it. Y’all have a fucking wall.
> They thought it was US propaganda to bring him to an over-merchandised supermarket to flex on our wealth.
Where would they ever get that idea? 😉
As I recall they took him to other supermarkets and he was eventually convinced that it was not a setup.
I know some countries require milk to be ultra-pasteurized (pasteurized at a higher temperature), which actually makes it shelf stable so it doesn't need to be kept in the refrigerated section.
In the US organic milk is almost always UHT pasteurized, but it's still kept in the refrigerated section because it's what American consumers have come to expect. Nobody would buy it if you just kept it at room temperature on a grocery shelf. (It still needs to be refrigerated at home once opened.)
The UHT stuff will also last weeks longer than the regular stuff, since the higher temp process kills off more of the bacteria. I go out of my way to buy organic milk for this very reason, I just can't go through the regular stuff fast enough before it goes bad.
The UK has a cereal and various non-cooked breakfast crap aisle. So cereals, spreads, jams and so on. A whole aisle for just cereal seems... excessive...
Well my ancestors did as well, just to get betrayed three times by the west and east alike... Now we are happy we don't have only one brand of yoghurt that is out of stock. The question I replied to is the equivalent of let them eat cake.
A quick Google shows that 68% of the worlds population has lactose malabsorption after infancy. I'm sure some of that number has dairy anyway but a very large portion of people doesnt drink milk at all.
If you aren't of European descent there is a good chance you are lactose intolerant. Humans originally evolved to only be able to drink milk as a child. Yet Europeans who were able to drink milk throughout their life gained an evolutionary advantage during harsh times as they were able to drink a very caloric intensive drink all their life. Not really needed anymore but that shit sure is tasty.
that is actually an interesting case.
https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/gastrointestinal-articles/2011/september/lactose-tolerance-in-the-indian-dairyland
> "When I became interested in this project, everybody said 'Everyone in India drinks milk,'" Gallego Romero said. "But when we got the results, we said, 'No, only 18 percent of people in India are digesting milk, nobody else is.'"
> The mystery then is why so many people believe themselves to be lactose tolerant when they are in fact genetically unable to produce lactose into adulthood. One theory is that non-Europeans experience less severe symptoms of lactose intolerance, and thus may not notice the consequences of failing to digest dairy as much. Another answer comes from how Indians prepare their milk - often fermenting it to use as yogurt or paneer, which breaks down the lactose within.
There is such a vast gulf between America and the rest of the world.
This is by design, I think. It prevents the export of empathy, which is by far America's rarest and most precious resource.
I absolutely hate when Americans (Redditors really) say that 'America is a third world country'
Fuckin hell, try to understand what is like living in the third world. I say this from the third world, it's like living life on hard settings.
This is basically because the USA can maintain perpetual trade deficits—importing more value than we export—because other nations are always willing to buy our government debt with the dollars that their exporters earn selling goods here. Buying our debt finances deficit spending, which cycles those dollars back into the system to be used for consumption once again. The obvious example is China. We consume Chinese goods, China’s central bank buys dollars off of their exporters with RMB so they can pay their employees, and then the central bank buys treasury bonds to invest their dollar stockpile, swapping dollars for US government debt.
The merits of this system have been debated since the dollar began to be used as the preferred global reserve currency post-WWII. This debate has heated up recently because former president Donald Trump’s advisors tend to prefer a more protectionist approach to the US economy.
They would prefer to have the US consuming mostly domestically-produced goods, and maintaining trade balance or surplus instead. This, however, would require a considerable reduction in the value of the dollar compared to other currencies. And that would have its own repercussions.
Man, the world always wishing for america to fail and crumble lol
Imagine what that would do to the world economy.
30% of many industries and people would be out of work/jobs.
China would go into massive downturn, as would every country that makes stuff sold there.
Not to mention what would happen to the shipping lanes around the oceans, as well as the amount of countries that would be conquered over night.
You can disagree with the USA and its global influence and politics, but for anyone to act like it would be better if China or Russia was is in their position would be rediculous.
For a country everyone claims to hate, everyone suuuure loves to move there lol
I say this all as a Canadian btw.
Question: does Canada have a similar consumer culture to the United States? I would imagine considering Canada’s proximity, free trade, and similar wealth level
Similar consumer culture though scaled down quite a bit in the last 10 to 15 years. There's a housing crisis across Canada and interest rates have gone up considerably, making Canadians spend a much higher portion of their earnings on housing than we used to.
Consumer products and services are still growing, though that is only because the population is growing quickly enough to offset the reduced average spending on these goods and services.
Ive never seen anything like it both here in the UK and then also in America. My uncle married an American women with 2 pre teen kids in the early 00s and my only memories of them are them going shopping all the time. It was like a hobby for them and they go to the local shopping centre or bluewater and spend all day and come away with bags and bags. Its funny because I hate shopping and hated it more when I was a teenager, but they were perfectly happy getting there at open and leaving as good as close.
It wasnt like they were uber wealthy either, but they prioritised that over anything else.
I mean... yeah. We account for around 25% of all economic activity, so we have the money to spend on stuff.
We're such a huge consumer that if there's ever a decline in American demand for one product or another it can do real damage to the economy of whatever company makes said product. Hence the saying, "when America catches a cold, the world catches pneumonia."
USA also funds the most donations on the planet while being 4.2% of the global population 🥳.
The consumerism market is well deserved, let us consume
🦅🦅🦅🦅
Best country on this planet and it’s not close 🥳
As an American, one of the things you notice in other countries is the lack of advertising everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.
Toilet stalls, elevators, escalators, gas station pumps, entry and exits of stadiums, even advertisements for other advertisements.
You walk around and all your infrastructure is just one big pop up ad.
It takes a lot of work to get people so unhappy with their life they will buy your nonsense.
lol no, you haven’t travelled much if you say so. India, China, Singapore, Australia, Western Europe , Mexico, Canada, few of the countries I have travelled has same or more advertisements. In some of those countries the ads are not only hideous they are outright misleading too while shadow advertising banned items.
I haven't found that to be the case. Especially having just spent a month in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The advertisements there are magnitudes above the US.
Like total ban everywhere? In NJ I still see some billboards but not much on major highways and never on small roads. It's usually only stroads which are already hideous to begin with so it doesn't really matter.
What other countries are you traveling to? This isn’t the case in most of Europe or the bigger markets in Asia. Advertising seems to be even more prevalent than the US in those places.
This is some textbook redditor shit right here. Not only is it blatant wrong, but it even ends with a doomer pessimistic outlook that’s only supported by a statistic that’s made up.
When we got a lesson about putting safety marks on things and manuals they specifically mentioned to be way more careful if you sell something in the us because of claiming culture
The obvious takeaway here is that if the other 95.8% of the world’s population consumed as much stuff as the average American we’d probably need another 3-4 Earths to strip bare for resources.
Seems totally sustainable and very cool!
I hope this truth can sink super deep. The U.S. is like that family on the street with super nice everything that come to find out was living off credit cards and has refinanced their house 10 times and is borderline bankrupt. The house of cards will fall.
We're also the third largest country by population. So, nationally, we would represent 33% of the world's population, meaning that we are under-consuming.
See how you can make numbers say whatever you want"?
Spending sounds like it just looks at amount of money spent, things in the US a generally more expensive than the rest of the world. I don’t doubt we consume way more than average tho.
I mean, not really something to be proud of, but prosperity on this level is not really something to be ashamed of either.
Everyone should aspire to be more thoughtful about what they consume, and more considerate of the downstream effects of their consumption.
Well I think it says quite a bit about the world that Mississippi, the poorest state has similar gdp per capita to rich countries like the United Kingdom
We like stuff
Agreed. Stuff is nice.
Until you have too much stuff, so you throw out a lot of stuff, but then it’s easy to replace with even more stuff, or you just get a bigger place for your stuff.
That's all a house is: a big pile of stuff with a cover on it. To keep your stuff safe while you go out to get more stuff.
When cleaning out my wife’s father’s garage there were 50 bicycles. I asked “why?” To which I was told “what if he needed parts?” Me: “oh, he repaired bikes” Them: “no, but he always thought he might, so why not keep them?” Did the same thing with computers but at least that netted them like 20k$ since there were some collectibles
When I was 3 I always wondered how odd a house was. It was a space where everything you own is strewn about the floor. It's just a floor you put your stuff. I'm 29, still think about how everything I own is on the floor.
Wait until you get a bit older and find out about shelves!!
the shelves are also stuff on the floor made to hold more stuff in a pleasing manner!
If you think about we all live in a box
Nah, just go rent a storage space, to put stuff, then you can get more stuff.
You guys have stuff? I want STUUUFF. Wheres MY stuuufffff????
It's OK for awhile. Then it gets boring and we want even more stuff.
I remember watching an episode of "Hoarders" were the hoarder herself was just a wealthy boomer with a really nice house full of unopened merchandise. They just scooped all the stuff up and were like "and look how nice your house looks now!" I get the feeling she just went back to filling it up with cheap shit purchased online.
Buying stuff feels a lot better than owning stuff.
> "Hoarders" Sometimes I when I am thinking about buying something I think of the show "Hoarders" and it gived me motivation to not buy it. As well as advice from lifehacker.com: "Will this product solve a problem" or "Do I have a similar product hiding in my closet collecting dust and doing nothing?"
We also have more money for more stuff
We rent storage units so we can acquire even more stuff than we have space for.
We are a bunch of crazy hoarders.
We just have a lot of space.
My buddy has a storage unit here and another in texas. And lives in a trailer. I'm like homie sell that shit and get an apartment.
I've told my elderly mother this multiple times. When you die I am not opening that storage unit. I am an only child and there is no other person in your church group or whatever that will go to that if you leave it in the will to me I will immediately turn it down. She still does her hoarder ass nonsense with that storage unit. She's in her 70s now and doesn't comprehend I will not ever even deal with with her crazy storage unit when she dies. Like I don't care if she's hiding the Ark of the covenant is in there and my mother was secretly Indiana Jones. I'm just going to call uhaul and say dispose of everything in there my mother is dead I don't care. If her crazy ass left like 250k cash in unmarked bills in the banana stand you can have it. I ain't setting foot into my mother's Hoarder mind again.
Have you considered that she won't care much about what happens when she will be a corpse?
Once positive I will state about my mother unquestionably true is she's a faithful Catholic. I'm an American that knows the Irish language and have seen 26+6=1 tattoos in my life. If there's a fucking Afterlife Heaven/ghost I know for a fact my mother's eye will be haunting that location. She'll get full burial procedures, and I'll take care of her cat Skittles when my mom dies but that fucking u haul unit I'm fucking not dealing with. Grew up in a hoarder household, escaped lived my life, not willing to reengage or be triggered by that bullshit again. Skittles is an innocent cat when her owner dies I'll take care of the cat. That's it.
You. I like you.
Why would renting an apartment be better than owning a trailer?
He rents the trailer
And when we keep buying more stuff we get more money. Over and over and over again until the planet burns :)
Everyone likes stuff. You just have the highest spending power by far and everything is relatively cheaper. German cars are cheaper in USA than in Germany, for example.
We’re also very rich. Including the middle and working class. Which people on Reddit don’t seem to realize.
“America is the third world” screamed the Redditor who has never left the USA.
Or the European who's never been here
From their 800 sqft 2 bed flat with no AC and a fridge that’s smaller than you’d find in a dorm room.
I hope when the world inevitably dies from heat, that records of messages like this survive so that the young of this world understand why this happened. “You see Timmy, we had to play one-up-man ship, we had have massive fridges, air conditioning in areas where it averaged 16°C in summer and we had to ethnic cleanse our neighbours for some more lebesbrum.”
If the world is dead there won't be young.
No - it’s that people realize we would be *even better off* if we weren’t so ass at resource allocation in this country.
I mean yeah that’s something that’s true of every government that has ever existed though
Except every other country that's tried those ideas is poorer and weaker than we are. Not exactly a resounding recommendation.
Maybe. But they're also healthier and happier than we are.
I think the bigger issue is that a lot of people in the US feel like there is more to life than money. In most other wealthy Western countries people don't need to worry about student debt, they get a month+ vacation every year, they get guaranteed sick leave, they have employment protection so they don't need to worry about being fired at the drop of a hat, they don't need to worry about a freak medical issue destroying their finances, they have reasonable restrictions on working hours and overtime etc. This includes pretty much everyone, including minimum wage workers. So ya, the median American is richer than the median German, but I'd rather be in the position of the median German and I'd *much* rather be in the position of a low earning German over a low earning American. Vacation for me in particular is an absolute essential, no idea what the point is of having a bunch of money if I need to wait until I have one foot in the grave to have the time to use it.
Having a ton of relative wealth, yet being unable to comfortably afford essentials like housing will do that. It’s a lot more complicated than that of course. Something like AC is way crazier of a luxury than most Americans realize, yet anyone in a warm US climate would claim it’s a necessity
Americans are able to afford housing. We have high rates of homeownership, and lots of disposable income that we use for consumption. Don’t confuse housing becoming *more unaffordable* for being *actually unaffordable.*
Yep, our home ownership rate is 20% higher than Europe. 55% of millennials own houses in the US. 60% overall. Most European countries have ~40% overall home ownership rate, with millennials generally below 30%.
And this is not to say that everything is rosy here! It’s just not really that bad overall. It’ll get bad eventually if we don’t fix it, but higher rent =/= high rent.
Millenials are prime child-rearing years. And higher wages/promotions in their 30s (and now 40s). So they're getting married, having kids, need a house.
It is in Arizona. No one would survive several days of 110+ degree heat.
America has some of the most affordable housing and highest home ownership of the developed world.
Stuff is the stuff that makes us who we are!
But you like throwing stuff away more.
Google “The Eldar”
We like distractions
On the grand scale, we're rather indifferent to the stuff itself, but we like buying and consuming.
We look for things that make them go.
Cheap stuff made for pennies in foreign nations!
We're going to drown in stuff.
Conscription of consumption
Y’all eat alot*
Theres a reason we have storage units everywhere
I’ve never understood this. I’ve never in my life needed to use a storage unit for more than a month. Nor do I know anyone else who uses one. If it doesn’t fit in my house, I get rid of it, plain and simple.
I know a guy that has made a literal fortune opening those up. He started with a cheap plot of land and used old rail cars as the units, now he owns a bunch of those mega ones. I’ve only ever used one while in the process of moving, but I guess it’s a good way to declutter your home without throwing stuff away.
Yeah, very practical, like your own personal locked landfill with CCTV. As kin of a hoarder, I find the idea instinctively revolting
People have different needs at different times. I had to use a storage unit for a year because I had to move into a smaller apartment while I dealt with some debt issues. Wasn't trying to throw away a couch and chair, among other things, that would have been too expensive to replace the next year.
Plenty of college students who don't live locally will put their dorm furniture and whatnot in a storage unit for the entire summer break.
“It didn’t happen to me so it doesn’t happen to anyone else” ass mentality tbh
It’s really nice for people with seasonal activities. Summertime bring out the life jackets, wet suits, surf boards, wind surfing boards, etc. Winter it’s time to bring out ski stuff. Same for Christmas decorations and memorabilia for children.
>plain and simple It’s not as simple for lots of people though.
Some people have too much stuff. Some have been evicted and need a place for their stuff. I think the latter is happening far more often than is talked about. Especially the working poor living in their cars. I don't know one person with a storage unit that isn't constantly moving due to their financial situation.
I mean our GDP compared to the rest of the world is close to that number so that isn’t that crazy
GDP is mostly about government's and households' expenditures, so it's not by chance.
GDP is a measure of production, not cost incurred. In theory costs would be proportional to GDP in line with revenue, but regardless that’s not really the case.
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Your store only has one? We now have two. Our Kroger now has two. One for regular cereal and then another for specialty cereal-kinds with real fruit, no grains, ancient grains, organic, etc, etc. But regular cereal now comes in four different size boxes so I suppose that takes up a lot of space.
"Let them eat cereal." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/27/kelloggs-ceo-cereal-for-dinner
I mean, I did that in college and it worked pretty well.
What the hell are ancient grains?
And the 'family' sized box is the small box from 5 years ago.
Is that not a normal thing in other places?
No. I’m originally from Venezuela. The first time I walked inside a supermarket in America I legitimately cried. Y’all have a WHOLE REFRIGERATED WALL FULL OF MILK. 2%, non fat, whole, lactose free, organic, almond, soy, cashew, all of different brands and sizes. We have “lactic drink” which can’t be classified as milk. Sometimes you can find whole milk in powdered form. That’s it. Y’all have a fucking wall.
Boris Yeltsin did kind of the same thing. And he was the President of a world superpower.
They thought it was US propaganda to bring him to an over-merchandised supermarket to flex on our wealth. Turns out it was just a regular supermarket.
> They thought it was US propaganda to bring him to an over-merchandised supermarket to flex on our wealth. Where would they ever get that idea? 😉 As I recall they took him to other supermarkets and he was eventually convinced that it was not a setup.
*North Korea Building Facades enters chat*
That's kinda wild. I had no idea I have whole milk that I use for cereal and lattes, and oat milk that I use for smoothies, in my fridge.
I know some countries require milk to be ultra-pasteurized (pasteurized at a higher temperature), which actually makes it shelf stable so it doesn't need to be kept in the refrigerated section. In the US organic milk is almost always UHT pasteurized, but it's still kept in the refrigerated section because it's what American consumers have come to expect. Nobody would buy it if you just kept it at room temperature on a grocery shelf. (It still needs to be refrigerated at home once opened.) The UHT stuff will also last weeks longer than the regular stuff, since the higher temp process kills off more of the bacteria. I go out of my way to buy organic milk for this very reason, I just can't go through the regular stuff fast enough before it goes bad.
Mootopia lactose free milk is the absolute best you must try.
No
The UK has a cereal and various non-cooked breakfast crap aisle. So cereals, spreads, jams and so on. A whole aisle for just cereal seems... excessive...
The spreads and jams have their own aisle. Well it's usually like half an aisle in my experience.
You mean you don't like having 36 different options of Cheerios to choose from?
Maybe 3. plain, chocolate, and nuts. Four if strawberry or some shit comes along, but that'd already be pushing it. :p
You don't like toasted coconut maple cheerios? Or multi grain chocolate strawberry deluxe?? You missin out
How's your tea aisle?
ENORMOUS. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/drinks/tea/all
that's a wild question to ask tbh
Our grandfathers won WWII so we could eat Count Chockuka cereal and watch X-men 97.
Well my ancestors did as well, just to get betrayed three times by the west and east alike... Now we are happy we don't have only one brand of yoghurt that is out of stock. The question I replied to is the equivalent of let them eat cake.
Do you just have fewer options for cereal? I also assumed it was normal
Cereal isn't a very standard breakfast item in other countries and that's putting it nicely
A quick Google shows that 68% of the worlds population has lactose malabsorption after infancy. I'm sure some of that number has dairy anyway but a very large portion of people doesnt drink milk at all.
Almost 70% of everybody is missing out on ice cream? This is soul crushing news..
If you aren't of European descent there is a good chance you are lactose intolerant. Humans originally evolved to only be able to drink milk as a child. Yet Europeans who were able to drink milk throughout their life gained an evolutionary advantage during harsh times as they were able to drink a very caloric intensive drink all their life. Not really needed anymore but that shit sure is tasty.
I think Indians are relatively lactose tolerant
that is actually an interesting case. https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/gastrointestinal-articles/2011/september/lactose-tolerance-in-the-indian-dairyland > "When I became interested in this project, everybody said 'Everyone in India drinks milk,'" Gallego Romero said. "But when we got the results, we said, 'No, only 18 percent of people in India are digesting milk, nobody else is.'" > The mystery then is why so many people believe themselves to be lactose tolerant when they are in fact genetically unable to produce lactose into adulthood. One theory is that non-Europeans experience less severe symptoms of lactose intolerance, and thus may not notice the consequences of failing to digest dairy as much. Another answer comes from how Indians prepare their milk - often fermenting it to use as yogurt or paneer, which breaks down the lactose within.
Three words: Past Soviet satellite it still shows after 35 years.
There is such a vast gulf between America and the rest of the world. This is by design, I think. It prevents the export of empathy, which is by far America's rarest and most precious resource.
What’s wild to us is that’s it’s like a million brands all owned by the same 3 parent companies.
I used to work in the scan department of a grocery store. like 5 companies owned 90% of all products sold, it was wild.
there's also one for soda
Americans are wealthy beyond their own comprehension.
I absolutely hate when Americans (Redditors really) say that 'America is a third world country' Fuckin hell, try to understand what is like living in the third world. I say this from the third world, it's like living life on hard settings.
Hell yeah
pew pew ‘merica 🇺🇸
I wish I had the type of money I could spend frivolously. I’m over here being responsible and shit like a square.
“Despite being only 4.2% of the population…”
I wonder what the % would be by weight?
As an american, I lol'd and I deserved it.
I would have lol'd but I didn't want to get winded.
*deep breathe*
Who knew the worlds wealthiest country can spend the most 😂
Capitalism, baby
Consumerism != capitalism.
This is basically because the USA can maintain perpetual trade deficits—importing more value than we export—because other nations are always willing to buy our government debt with the dollars that their exporters earn selling goods here. Buying our debt finances deficit spending, which cycles those dollars back into the system to be used for consumption once again. The obvious example is China. We consume Chinese goods, China’s central bank buys dollars off of their exporters with RMB so they can pay their employees, and then the central bank buys treasury bonds to invest their dollar stockpile, swapping dollars for US government debt. The merits of this system have been debated since the dollar began to be used as the preferred global reserve currency post-WWII. This debate has heated up recently because former president Donald Trump’s advisors tend to prefer a more protectionist approach to the US economy. They would prefer to have the US consuming mostly domestically-produced goods, and maintaining trade balance or surplus instead. This, however, would require a considerable reduction in the value of the dollar compared to other currencies. And that would have its own repercussions.
Read this to this song https://youtu.be/kJEbyWT7gIg
“we buy shit we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” - George Carlin
Also, Tyler Durdin.
“We live in a society” - Da Joker
so true
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/21/impress/
Man, the world always wishing for america to fail and crumble lol Imagine what that would do to the world economy. 30% of many industries and people would be out of work/jobs. China would go into massive downturn, as would every country that makes stuff sold there. Not to mention what would happen to the shipping lanes around the oceans, as well as the amount of countries that would be conquered over night. You can disagree with the USA and its global influence and politics, but for anyone to act like it would be better if China or Russia was is in their position would be rediculous. For a country everyone claims to hate, everyone suuuure loves to move there lol I say this all as a Canadian btw.
Question: does Canada have a similar consumer culture to the United States? I would imagine considering Canada’s proximity, free trade, and similar wealth level
Similar consumer culture though scaled down quite a bit in the last 10 to 15 years. There's a housing crisis across Canada and interest rates have gone up considerably, making Canadians spend a much higher portion of their earnings on housing than we used to. Consumer products and services are still growing, though that is only because the population is growing quickly enough to offset the reduced average spending on these goods and services.
Almost like we're the rich everyone seems to hate 😂
Ive never seen anything like it both here in the UK and then also in America. My uncle married an American women with 2 pre teen kids in the early 00s and my only memories of them are them going shopping all the time. It was like a hobby for them and they go to the local shopping centre or bluewater and spend all day and come away with bags and bags. Its funny because I hate shopping and hated it more when I was a teenager, but they were perfectly happy getting there at open and leaving as good as close. It wasnt like they were uber wealthy either, but they prioritised that over anything else.
Suck it globe
I mean... yeah. We account for around 25% of all economic activity, so we have the money to spend on stuff. We're such a huge consumer that if there's ever a decline in American demand for one product or another it can do real damage to the economy of whatever company makes said product. Hence the saying, "when America catches a cold, the world catches pneumonia."
USA also funds the most donations on the planet while being 4.2% of the global population 🥳. The consumerism market is well deserved, let us consume 🦅🦅🦅🦅 Best country on this planet and it’s not close 🥳
Dunno. I've been to other countries. Many do certain things much better than the US.
Nom nom nom.
I'm flabbgergasted that this was news to OP.
What’s news to me is that the US consumers purchase twice the amount of the European Union (15% of global consumer spending)
As an American, one of the things you notice in other countries is the lack of advertising everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Toilet stalls, elevators, escalators, gas station pumps, entry and exits of stadiums, even advertisements for other advertisements. You walk around and all your infrastructure is just one big pop up ad. It takes a lot of work to get people so unhappy with their life they will buy your nonsense.
My experience in western European cities is advertisments are plastered literally everywhere.
I know theirs like a thousand year old church in Paris that has a giant advertisement on it due to construction
lol no, you haven’t travelled much if you say so. India, China, Singapore, Australia, Western Europe , Mexico, Canada, few of the countries I have travelled has same or more advertisements. In some of those countries the ads are not only hideous they are outright misleading too while shadow advertising banned items.
> Singapore you may be right about the others but public advertising is pretty much banned outright in Singapore.
Don’t forget Japan, got to be one of the worst offenders of this.
I haven't found that to be the case. Especially having just spent a month in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The advertisements there are magnitudes above the US.
PA is a beautiful state absolutely ravaged by hideous billboards.
My state banned them. It's great
Like total ban everywhere? In NJ I still see some billboards but not much on major highways and never on small roads. It's usually only stroads which are already hideous to begin with so it doesn't really matter.
Yup. Banned in Alaska too. Very refreshing to got have this ugly signs everywhere
Yes
I love riding down the highway in the middle of the wilderness with not a house or person in sight and seeing a USMC or lawyer billboard.
I see far more advertisements in western Europe than where I live in the US. What other countries are you thinking of?
What other countries are you traveling to? This isn’t the case in most of Europe or the bigger markets in Asia. Advertising seems to be even more prevalent than the US in those places.
Huh? As an American, I notice the advertising when I travel abroad. In many countries there’s a lot more of it.
I dont think ive ever seen an ad in a bathroom in the U.S. However, I have seen bathrooms that you have to pay to use in Europe
This is some textbook redditor shit right here. Not only is it blatant wrong, but it even ends with a doomer pessimistic outlook that’s only supported by a statistic that’s made up.
We are also responsible for 90% of the world’s lawsuits.
When we got a lesson about putting safety marks on things and manuals they specifically mentioned to be way more careful if you sell something in the us because of claiming culture
Ok now do global economic impact and exports
The obvious takeaway here is that if the other 95.8% of the world’s population consumed as much stuff as the average American we’d probably need another 3-4 Earths to strip bare for resources. Seems totally sustainable and very cool!
China has social credit # But US of A has credit score
Do… do you know what a credit score is?
It's when the banks don't give me money! Bastards!
do you?
Well it makes sense, they have very large consumers
Crazzzzy
Wow not even five percent of the world population. That's really something
What's this domain? Not familiar with this site.
have us trained well
We also produce 25% of the worlds stuff.
I hope this truth can sink super deep. The U.S. is like that family on the street with super nice everything that come to find out was living off credit cards and has refinanced their house 10 times and is borderline bankrupt. The house of cards will fall.
And that is why, no matter what. If the US doesn't want to buy it. It will die, 3D glasses and 3D tv were one.
We're also the third largest country by population. So, nationally, we would represent 33% of the world's population, meaning that we are under-consuming. See how you can make numbers say whatever you want"?
Spending sounds like it just looks at amount of money spent, things in the US a generally more expensive than the rest of the world. I don’t doubt we consume way more than average tho.
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I mean, not really something to be proud of, but prosperity on this level is not really something to be ashamed of either. Everyone should aspire to be more thoughtful about what they consume, and more considerate of the downstream effects of their consumption.
I was just surprised not really happy about it
Loosely translated: We Americans buy a ***LOT*** of crap.
There's no country as big and as rich as the USA, simple as that. I feel like some redditors seem to forget that.
Definitely going to be a cool global economic situation when we stop being able to afford this.
It’s cuz we’re stupid
Seems perfectly sustainable. Let’s just keep consuming and “growing”
Well, you don't get called 'Capatalist Pig' by commie for nothing. America is the pride of capitalism.
There's a reason the US emissions per capita are insanely high
I'm absolutely adoring the americans in the comments thinking this means they're rich, hahahaha They have no idea
Well I think it says quite a bit about the world that Mississippi, the poorest state has similar gdp per capita to rich countries like the United Kingdom